Diabetes FAQ » Diabetes Q&A » Can a person suffering with diabetes also get cancer because of it?

Can a person suffering with diabetes also get cancer because of it?

Both cancer and diabetes are common diseases prevalent in the United States today; however not much research has been done to determine a link between the two of them. Nevertheless, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association there is a link. It appears that cancers patients who also have diabetes have more of a chance of not surviving their cancer than cancer patients who do not have this blood sugar disorder. Yet, there is no evidence to affirm that diabetes patients will develop cancer. They are more at risk for heart disease, kidney failure and stroke.

What researchers need to do is to find out why diabetes has a bearing on cancer and if they can find that reason they may be able to reduce the deaths from these two diseases combined together according to Dr. Frederick Brancati, a professor of medicine and epidemiology from the renown Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore, Maryland.

There are currently about 24 million people in the USA who have diabetes and roughly 18 percent of new cancer patients have the disease as well. Dr. Brancati suggests that there may be the answer right in plain view, but no one has taken the time to really study the relationship between diabetes and cancer in any great detail.

The question still remains: Are they related or are they not?

Dr. Brancati and his team set out to analysis all the available data from reliable studies (23) in a Meta analysis, to investigate new cancer patients who already had diabetes when diagnosed with cancer. It is sad to say that the team of researchers found that cancer patients had a 1.4 greater chance of dying if they already had diabetes. The research showed the death rate was higher in many kinds of cancer; however, the ones that were actually statistically significant were breast cancer, endometrial and colorectal cancer. Dr. Brancati hopes to one day be able to reduce as much as 10 percent of cancers by finding the link between diabetes and cancer.

Other researchers seems to suggest that the link is out there, people with diabetes are at a greater risk of getting cancer because people with diabetes mellitus are usually obese. Obesity is a risk factor already for some forms of cancer.

Other reasons for the connection between diabetes and cancer could be because of:

• High blood glucose levels, which could affect the cancerous tumors perhaps even making them grow faster.
• Diabetes presents other health concerns such as kidney disease, and heart problems. These conditions may weaken the immune system and the ability for diabetics to withstand chemotherapy. Doctors have to find other less aggressive treatments, which may not be strong enough to fight off the cancer.
• People with diabetes already have a weakened immune system as it is. Diabetic are susceptible to infections and may not survive surgery or other cancer treatment.

Since doctors are concentrating on the symptoms of diabetes, they may miss signs of cancer and therefore the cancer may be detected very late, losing the advantages of early diagnosis and cure.

The reverse may also hold true, the doctors are focusing on the cancer and neglecting the diabetes, which may also affect the outcome of cancer deaths among people diagnosed with diabetes mellitus.

There is also the possibility that there really is no relation between the two diseases except that diabetics are prone to all kinds of diseases and their mortality rate is higher than non-diabetics.

Depression also affects the outcome of recovery from a serous illness and anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of individuals who have been diagnosed with diabetes shows signs of severe episodes of depression. Depressed people will delay going for exams, treatments, and generally seeking help. They may even stop taking their medications.

The bottom line is that more research is needed before any real answers can be given to this question.

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